The Handmaids Tale
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Fool me once, shame on you.
Enemies to allies to enemies to allies to enemies.
How many fingers will Serena need to lose before she accepts that patriarchy means no women at the table?
My guess is ten.
The limit, I fear, does not exist.
Exile is a well-crafted hour of television, replete with affecting parallels and some satisfying callbacks.
Because you know whats really evil about a totalitarian state in which all women are subjugated and/or enslaved?
She tells their leader, Abigail, to call her Rachel.
Would living in the absence of men cure Serena of obsessively managing how men treat women?
Set it right, Abigail tells her, like honey to the ear of a megalomaniac.
No, Serena, youve done enough.
Unfortunately, Serena receives this wrongheaded advice at the worst possible moment.
Serena eagerly accepts the invitation to build Gilead Lite tastes great, less filling!
because the zeal of a true believer is her biggest liability and her source of endless resilience.
The only thing Serena ever wanted more than a baby was a pulpit for her own fundamentalism.
Two months of peace and quiet turns out to be Junes R&R limit as well.
By some miracle, she doesnt have to.
In Alaska, shes not just safe, shes a child again.
She wakes up in her mothers bed.
Shes so smart, Holly says of Nichole, just like grandmothers reliably do.
June tells her mother that the last she saw Hannah, Hannah no longer recognized her.
Can anyone but your own mother help you heal from the pain of that?
Holly searched for her daughter, were told, but limited phone access made it difficult.
But wouldnt the trains and planes bringing supplies up North occasionally fly a newspaper to Alaska?
The Americans in Alaska would surely know about Angels Flight, the largest rescue operation in history.
And June didnt exactly keep a low profile during her time in Toronto.
Did Holly never see a front-page photo of June at a rally, standing by Mark Tuellos side?
What about Junes testimony at Fred Waterfords highly publicized trial?
Am I missing something?
It seems so slapdash that Im inclined to think that I am, in fact, missing something.
I was curious to see how June would react to tranquility.
At first, it seems to be working out.
Mark and Moira spring Luke from jail.
Hell need to wait around for his hearing, but then he can hop a train to Alaska.
Understandably, though, Luke is done waiting.
He needs Hannah back, too.
Nick, too, finds himself in a precarious situation in New Bethlehem.
The same Mark who has just started coordinating with Mayday, which now includes Luke.
Nick and Luke cant both be with June when this show ends in another seven episodes.
Is she going to choose one over the other?
In his meeting with Mark, Nick talks about Mayday fighters as though its a suicide mission.
If Luke dies getting Hannah out of Gilead, it will be as tragic as it is tidy.
Its a worthy thing to do.
It is, without a doubt, what June Osborne would do.
Of course, Nichole barely knows her grandmother.
Shes barely met her father.
Shes never lived anywhere for more than a few months.
But maybe this can be where Nichole learns to walk and talk.
Maybe itsherlast chance at a normal life.
When June arrives in Alaska, she is as far away from Hannah as shes ever been.
When she rejoins Mayday, shell be just as far from Nichole.
In a previous season, June told Serena that she cant protect her baby unless shes with him.
That was true then.
But how do you protect your daughter from an encroaching ideology?
Maybe you hide her a world away.
Ultimately, Exile walks back a lot of what I found so thrillingly kinetic about the season premiere.
These women are shrewd and difficult and fearsome, butThe Handmaids Talenever lets them be truly complex.
No one can change their minds.
They are precision-guided missiles hell-bent on their objectives.
Not until all the handmaids are free, she tells her mother.
But what if these peoples insistence their resilience is more complicated than they even know?
And June could have kept Nichole safe in Alaska and let Luke lead the search for Hannah down South.
